"Jump forward to 2013, when last month Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero said that we have at last figured out that issue of connecting the spinal cord. The head transplant is now feasible, said Canavero, and he has a project called HEAVEN that's going to do it.

"HEAVEN stands for Head Anastomosis Venture, which is a poor choice of acronyms in an industry constantly sidestepping God-complex accusations. Maybe it's like, ironic in a super self-aware way. That would be unique among the pages of the journal Surgical Neurology International, though, where Canavero dives deep into the specifics of how HEAVEN will work. So deep that we arrive at the existential."